


Prank

by Kicker



Series: Storytime with Deacon [2]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Comedy, F/M, Spoilers, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-24
Updated: 2016-06-24
Packaged: 2018-07-18 01:21:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7293712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kicker/pseuds/Kicker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Deacon tells a little story about the time Hancock tried to play a trick on X6-88.</p>
<p>(In which the General goes to extremes to reassure her favorite ex-Courser.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prank

**Author's Note:**

> Any similarity to a Jason Statham film with a rhyming title is purely coincidental _:cough:_

Once upon a time, there was a ghoul named Hancock. He was the mayor of a town called Goodneighbor, purveyor of a variety of mind-altering chemicals, and an asshole.

Hey, we all have our moments. He just has a lot of them. Take right now.

He's sitting in a rickety, splintered bar in a place called Starlight. Sounds nice, don't it? It marks the spot of the first real settlement founded by the sole survivor of Vault 111. General of the Minutemen, destroyer of the Institute, and she will have her vengeance in this life or the...

Wrong film. Sorry.

Anyway. Everywhere she went, she made new friends. Some tall, some short, some grumpy, some charming. Some of them tended farms for her, some of them fought battles with her, some were just there to show her a good time.

(Some of them watched her back for her, whether she knew about it or not. Wink wink.)

Not all of them got along.

Enter, stage right, a synth. Designation X6-88.

X6-88 is a difficult man to like. He doesn't do humor. He doesn't do fun. He doesn't do much at all except man his guardpost during the designated hours, and sit in a corner the rest of the time. He prefers the night shift. More dangerous, or spooky, or whatever. Plus he doesn't have to talk to anyone, which is how he likes it.

Hancock, by contrast, is a man of the people. He's also up all night, but more because he's partying his ass off and there's always someone new to chat to in a place as bustling as Starlight. Still an asshole, but a charming asshole. Which... looks weird when you see it in print. Huh.

He's only in Starlight temporarily, as is the General. They're just passing through on their way down south, or east, or something, off to cause mayhem in another settlement. Right now, she's away in her office, dealing with the paperwork that goes with being the unelected tyrant in charge of most of the Commonwealth.

Oh, sorry, did that say 'tyrant'? It should have said 'glorious savior'. My bad.

Anyway. Hancock, X6-88, bar. They're sitting together in that 'we're acquaintances so we should sit together but we don't actually have anything to talk about' awkward silence sort of way. Kinda strange to see Hancock like that, he can make a deathclaw talk (admittedly only to say raaaooouurrrwwwghh and try to rip your face off, but you know. That's an important part of the post-apocalyptic skillset.)

Well... judging by the look on his face, it's not so strange at all.

In fact, it seems like he has some sort of plan.

He slides a box of Fancy Lads Snack Cakes across the table toward X6.

"Go on," he says, a charming smile on his face. "Be my guest."

Now - I don't want to spoil the surprise for anyone, but 3rd generation synths, of which Mr X is one, as a rule cannot resist Fancy Lads Snack Cakes. They just can't. So the fact that Hancock just pushed a full box toward his synthy acquaintance means he's probably trying to test his capacity.

The fact that this is the third one in about half an hour says that capacity is pretty big.

Thing is, though... even synths have a limit. They have to, right? I mean, that's a whole lot of sugar, and even more grease. He might burn off the calories through the power of raw masculinity, but there's got to be some physical side-effects. Right?

Right.

Look close, now.

Sweat's beading on his brow, and although you can't really tell without a heart rate monitor, that heart of his is banging away inside his chest. His mind's probably running away with him, too, in that paranoid am-I-dying sort of way that happens when you cram too much sugar down your gullet.

Which makes what Hancock does next all the more cruel.

"You okay?" he asks. "You're lookin' kinda sick."

X6 takes another cake out of the packet. "I am... fine," he says, with a little effort. He chews thoughtfully on the cake, the sugar sending another jolt of speed to his heart.

"You sure?" says Hancock. "I can hear your hear beatin' from here."

"That cannot be possible," says X6, finishing the cake. He shifts awkwardly in his seat. "Can you?"

"Yeah," says Hancock.

X6 stares at the box of snack cakes, willing himself to resist it.

He takes another. And that's another dose of simple carbohydrates, right into his system.

"Say," says Hancock, and that's when you know he's about to cause trouble. "Do you feel kinda... cold, and kinda hot, all at the same time?"

"No," says X6-88. He wipes the grease from his fingers, and sits back in his chair. If you look closely, you can see that he's trying to sit on his hands. "Perhaps," he admits. "Why?"

"Oh, it's probably nothin'," says Hancock. "Only, I heard some settlers talkin' earlier about this sickness that's goin' around. Maybe you caught it."

"Impossible," says X6-88, through a mouthful of snack cake. He doesn't quite know how it got there. "My immune system is infinitely superior to that of any surface-dweller."

"Oh," says Hancock. "See, the settlers were talkin' about synths at the time. Down at Warwick Homestead, you know, where most of the synths end up. They all had it."

"I find that highly unlikely," says X6-88.

X6-88's a cynic at heart, and synths do have hearts so you can't deny that. But Hancock is a charming ghoul, and if theres anything likely to melt the heart of a frosty cynic, it's a charmer.

Wait for it...

"What are the symptoms?" asks X6-88.

"Elevated heart rate," says Hancock.

X6-88 doesn't react.

"Cold sweats," says Hancock.

X6-88 doesn't react.

"And nausea," says Hancock.

X6-88 shifts uneasily on his seat.

"You got all of them, don't ya?" says Hancock. Then he does that inward-whistle thing people do when they're about to tell you an amount of caps that'll make your eyes water. And that sounds _really_ ominous when a ghoul does it.

X6-88 looks coolly at Hancock. Hard to look any other way in a pair of sweet shades, but you know. "Tell me everything you know about this... disease."

"Well," says Hancock. "It's fatal, of course."

X6-88's hand reaches out for another cake.

"Or at least," Hancock continues, "it can be. See, you start with your heartrate high, and that's okay. But gradually it slows down, and down, and down, until eventually it stops altogether. Happens real quick, like, over the course of an hour."

X6-88 stops, mid-bite.

"Only known treatment is to keep your heartrate up."

"How high?" asks X6-88.

"Oh, I don't know, they didn't specify," says Hancock, airily. "But you're alive now, ain't ya? So somewhere around there."

X6-88's unoccupied fingers creep up to his neck.

Hancock, by now, is singing a little song inside his head about how dumb synths are. He doesn't realise he's set in motion a series of events that will rock the settlement to its very foundations. Parts of it, anyway.

So far X6-88's latent panic has been enough to keep his heart pumping. But now, as the sugar rush begins to subside, so does the pace of his heart. There's a little feedback loop, oh my god I'm going to die, wait it's sped up again I'm fine, oh my god I'm going to die. You know the kind.

"Hancock," says X6-88. "I'm sure you're aware how much I dislike the thought of asking for your assistance, but it seems I must."

"Sure," says Hancock, "since you ask so nice, and all."

"As a Courser, I have been trained to maximise bodily efficiency by maintaining a low resting heart rate and extremely quick recovery times. To deliberately increase my heartrate seems counter-intuitive."

"Yeah," drawls Hancock. "And?"

"So," says X6-88. "What should I do?"

Hancock sits back in his chair, resting his elbows over the back of it. "Interestin' question," he says. "One I am, in fact, equipped to answer. As a thrill-seeker of many years, I can tell you that sex, chems, and bein' shit-scared are the best ways of getting that heart o'yours pumpin'. One and two are probably out, and I don't reckon there's much scares you, so I guess we're stuck."

"Who else will know?"

Hancock shrugs, and pulls a packet of cigarettes from his pocket.

X6-88 slams his hand on the table.

Hancock's eyebrows shoot up to the top of his head, or they would if he had any left.

"Who else will know," repeats X6-88, his voice as cool and polite as before.

See, Hancock hasn't really thought this through. It's all very well to play a trick on a somewhat naive ex-Courser you can't stand, but at some point someone else is going to find out about it, and then you're going to feel like a complete asshole.

Or, that's what anyone but Hancock would probably think. Hancock grins. "Oh, I don't know," he says. "But I bet our lady General would."

  
Having stalked across the settlement, panic rising (good), X6-88 slams into Starlight's main office. He finds the General at her desk, which is a relief (bad).

"I need to raise my heartrate," he says, with no introduction to the situation. "What do you recommend?"

She blinks a couple of times. Hancock sidles into the office, lit cigarette in hand. She's so confused she doesn't even tell him to take it outside, and she really hates it when people smoke in her office.

"Ma'am?" says X6-88.

"Oh," she says. "Well, uh. I don't know." She's looking between the two of them with a magnificently confused expression on her face, wanting to ask Hancock what the hell he's been saying but unable to in front of the victim.

"Ma'am," says the victim. "Please. It is important."

"Okay," she says. "You could go for a jog? Couple of turns around the settlement?"

He nods. "Yes," he says. "Twice around the perimeter should be enough to raise my heartrate into the active zone. Thank you, ma'am."

He disappears out of the door.

She raises an eyebrow at Hancock.

"What?" he says, with a magnificently innocent expression.

"I presume you had something to do with this?" she says.

"I don't know what you're talkin' about," he says.

Not to overuse the magnificently :adjective: trope, she gives him a magnificently hard stare which only serves to make him grin. But, he does confess.

"You told him what?" she exclaims.

His grin grows even wider.

"You have to come clean," she says. "Come on, poor X6. You know he's not used to your humor."

X6-88 slams back in through the door, a fine sheen of sweat on his brow. A casual observer probably wouldn't notice how the General's head tilts slightly to the side when X6-88 removes his big old leather coat, revealing a tight, muscular torso covered by a tight, dark t-shirt. Only casual observers in this room, though, so he just gets to stand there all muscular, breathing slightly heavier than usual.

"Hancock," she says, eventually. "I think you've got something to say?"

Hancock grins, and looks like he might be planning to keep up the ploy, but she gives him A Look, to which he submits.

"There ain't no sickness," he says. "I was just playin' with you."

X6-88 doesn't react.

"So," continues Hancock, cheerily, "you can return to your superior maximum-efficiency, low-resting-heart-rate existence now."

X6-88 doesn't react. Until he does. "I cannot," he says.

"What do you mean?" asks the General.

"I verified your story," says X6-88. "One of the settlers confirmed it. More than one, in fact."

He presses his fingers to his neck.

"I shall return shortly," he says.

Then he disappears outside again.

Hancock and the General stare at the door as it bounces in the doorframe.

"Hancock," she says. "Did you rope in settlers to this?"

"Nope," he says, eyes wide. "You really think I thought about it that hard?"

"Nope," she says. "Did someone put you up to it? I know Deacon's around here somewhere, it would be just like him to try and fuck with X6."

(Rude.)

"Naw," says Hancock. "I improvised."

She rests her hand on her chin, and her elbow on the desk, and sighs deeply. "What are we going to do now?"

Hancock shrugs. "Keep him busy, I guess. Keep him excited."

He follows that with an appropriately lascivious wink.

"John," she says, a warning note in her voice.

"What?" he says, the picture of innocence.

Now, your average person would probably feel some sense of responsibility, and stick around to clean up their mess.

But this is Hancock.

"Well," he says, "he ain't gonna believe anythin' I say now. And I've been up all night so I'm about ready to pass out. I'm sure you can handle him though, right?"

And with that, he wanders out of the office.

"Shit," says the General. She sits back in her chair. How to keep a notoriously stoic and unemotional synth excited for the next twelve hours. She looks at the clock, taped up on the wall. It's just ticking up to noon when X6-88 bursts back in the door.

He stands there, breathing, sweating, being all muscular and all. She's probably thinking wryly about how easily the situation would be resolved if the roles were reversed. Just stand there, X6, no reason, you couldn't pick that object over there off the floor, could you, marvellous.

That's just not going to work.

"Okay," she says. "How are you feeling?"

"Fine," he says.

She raises her eyebrows. She's been working real hard on breaking that fresh-outta-the-Institute, deny-all-discomfort-or-individuality thing he's got going on. And maybe - just maybe - it might be starting to work.

"Nauseous," he says. "Tired. And... concerned."

"That's... that's to be understood," she says.

He holds his fingers to his neck.

"X6," she says, "are you sure I can't persuade you that this isn't real? I can take you to the doctor, she'll tell you."

"It was the doctor who told me," he says. "It was the first place I went. I apologise for not trusting you, but I know you and the... Hancock are close."

She nods, a little sadly perhaps. Not because of the closeness with Hancock, of course, but the inevitability of the next twelve hours. Because if she has to stay with him, and he has to run, she has to run with him. Pretty lucky that she did track at college, really. It may have been two hundred years ago, that's true, but that sort of thing doesn't leave you. Or so they say, anyway. Whoever they are.

X6-88 paces the room in front of her desk, giving her multiple angles of that muscular bod of his.

"You can't just run laps all day," she says, "you'll wear yourself out. We need to think of something else."

"Hancock had a number of suggestions," says X6-88, pacing.

"Oh?" she says.

"Yes ma'am," says X6-88, pausing briefly. "Sex, chems, and being shit-scared."

Her eyebrows shot up at the first suggestion and didn't come down far for the second or third. "Well," she says, carefully ignoring the first option, "I wouldn't recommend starting on the chems, it's a slippery slope. Does anything scare you?"

There's a long pause, and a long silence, broken only by his regular footfalls on the wooden floor.

"I am not fond of heights," he says, eventually.

"Okay," she says. "I guess that's as good a start as any. There's not much tall around here, though. Oh, except for the screen. Is that tall enough?"

"I don't know," says X6-88. "But I am willing to try."

She leads him out of the office, heading toward the big drive-in screen. Huge thing, it is, shades a lot of the settlement during the day. Some of the settlers are already calling it an eyesore, which just goes to show that NIMBYs never die.

"Can we move faster?" he asks.

She breaks into a light jog alongside him, until they reach the screen and the set of stairs that leads up inside it.

"This is effective," he says over his shoulder, climbing the steps two-at-a-time. "I may return to these steps later."

She lets out a silent groan, and follows him up. At the top, with the wind whipping through her hair, even she has a moment of vertigo and grips the railing tight.

"Ma'am?" he says.

"I'm not the biggest fan of heights myself," she says.

"What do I do?" asks X6-88.

"Uh, look over the edge," she says, "I guess. Let the natural reaction happen. That should do you for a while."

"Like this?" he asks, holding onto the rail and leaning right over it.

"No no no," she says, grabbing his arm and pulling him back. "These railings are rusted to shit, you might fall. The idea is to scare you, not kill you."

"True," he says.

She lets out a shaky breath, and tries not to look over the edge herself.

"Ma'am," he says.

"Yes?" she replies.

"You are still holding my arm."

She removes her hand, and laughs awkwardly. She goes to sit cross-legged in the very middle of the screen. Her hands might also creep down to her sides, flat on the floor, reassure her it's still there.

X6-88 looks over the railing, reels back and shakes his head. Then he nods, disappears down the steps, and returns again a few minutes later. He repeats this a number of times. But after a while, he stands in front of her and draws her attention.

"It is no longer working," he says. "The height no longer concerns me and I should conserve the strength in my legs in case of need later on."

The General checks her Pip-Boy. 14:00.

Ten hours to go.

  
Throughout all of this, we haven't paid much attention to the victim of Hancock's cruel scheme. It's real easy to characterise him as an emotionless lump of meat in a black coat and some sweet shades, but that isn't the case, not at all.

Take right now, for example.

The General has racked her brains for the next thing to keep him on his toes. Combat, she thought. But that won't work. The man's a machine when it comes to combat. Highly trained, deadly, and ruthlessly efficient. In the field with her, he spends most of his time scolding her for sloppy footwork, or for not paying enough attention to her surroundings.

He pointed that out.

So she told him to hand over his gun.

After a quick jog out into the wilderness, they're looking for enemies to kill. For her to kill. He just has to leave her to it.

Terrifying, right? So terrifying, every enemy in a thirty mile radius has gone into hiding.

"Where the hell is everything?" she snarls. "Usually I can't step outside the settlement without something trying to eat my face."

But then a snarl floats back, from a little distance away. Feral mongrels, five of them, huddled around and chewing happily on the corpse of a radstag.

Zap. She takes out the meanest-looking one. The rest of the dogs scatter, looking around to find the source of the big bang.

X6-88 likes that. He likes her posture, too, low on one knee, back straight, muscles taut in her shoulders, though he does think she should relax them a bit to help absorb the recoil better.

Zap. She takes out another, but this one's bigger and needs two blasts, by which point one of the remaining mongrels has spotted the pair of them and lets out a couple of warning barks.

Always take out the smart one first. There's a tip for you.

His heart's definitely beating faster as he looks at her, and it gets a little faster still when she doesn't notice one of the dogs circling around and approaching from the side. Now, X6-88's not supposed to be fighting, but this mongrel is getting real close, and is looking real toothy.

Then it leaps.

X6-88 leaps too, pushing her out of its path and punching the mongrel right in the nose. Muzzle. Whatever. With his bare hands, he snaps the beast's neck, and tosses the limp body to one side.

(He _really_ doesn't like dogs. Don't let that color your judgment of him, however, he just hasn't woken up with Dogmeat breathing in his face which is the way that mutt usually ingratiates himself with new friends.)

In his haste to help out, however, he knocked the General off-balance, so she's now lying in the dust trying to beat the last mongrel away from her face with the butt of his laser rifle. So he punches that one in the muzzle, too, then snatches the gun out of her hands and finishes the beast off himself.

Now, if you were to look at his face now, you'd think he's cool as a cucumber. Slight sheen of sweat, maybe, but no worse than hers. Mouth set in that hard line. But look at him. He's right beside her, knees pressed up against her back. He's casting that gun around like he's sure there's another mongrel on the way, except he's an ex-Courser so you know he knows for a fact that they're all gone.

Interesting, huh?

When he's calmed down enough to think, he grabs her arm and pulls her up. The mongrel caught her with its teeth, so she's got a good coating of blood on her arms, and plenty of dust on her besides.

"Are you injured?" he asks.

"No," she says. "Not badly, anyway."

His hand creeps up to his neck again, testing the old BPM.

"Uh, X6?" she says, after a little while.

"Ma'am?" he says.

"You're still holding my arm," she says.

He lets go.

They half-walk, half-run back to Starlight. As they duck in through that massive hole in the fence, they see a certain ghoul Mayor, leaning nonchalantly against the checkpoint.

"Oh," says Hancock. "There y'are."

"Hey," says the General. "Weren't you off to sleep?"

"Yeah," says Hancock. "But I had an idea. For our friend here."

"Go on," says X6-88.

"Well," says Hancock, "A fusion core packs a real punch, right? So what you could do is wire it to a couple of clips, and attach 'em to your..."

"Hancock," says the General, hastily, raising her voice to drown him out in case he doesn't stop.

"Mm?" he says, grinning.

"Shut up?" she suggests.

He grins even wider. "Just tryin' to help," he says.

X6-88 doesn't know what to think of this. In fact, it looks like he's kind of curious, so it's nice that the General is looking out for him, isn't it? Isn't it.

She checks her Pip-Boy.

"Seven hours to go," she says, with a weary tone.

Turns out the mention of fusion cores has been helpful, though, because her eyes light up.

"I've got an idea," she says. "Come with me."

She leads X6-88 over to a storage shed at the side of the settlement. It's a big old thing, has its own security crew, and when she opens the door you'll understand why.

Creak. Slam. Four pristine sets of power armor. Varying tasteful designs, set up for different sized folks.

She looks him up and down with a clinical eye, then points at the third one along.

"That one'll do for you," she says.

"Ma'am?" he says.

She unlocks a steamer truck hidden under a workbench, and pulls out a couple of fusion cores. She tosses one at him, then ducks around the back of the first set of armor, real cool that one is, painted with flames and such. Slams the core in the back without even looking (cool, right?) and flips the suit open.

"Go on, then," she says, and pulls herself into it with a couple of surprisingly muscular arms.

X6-88 tears his eyes away, and gets himself all armor-clad too.

As they trot on out of the storage shed, settlers scatter before them, but that's just how it's supposed to be, so it doesn't help his heartrate. You try getting in a set of power armor and not being all 'out of the way, puny humans'. At least he can see that heartrate on a nice yellow readout. Right there, right in front of his eyes. Constant reminder of his mortality. Definitely not soothing.

At a reasonable distance outside the settlement, she draws back her giant metallic hand and throws something. A flare.

"I'd tell you to run around while we wait," she says, "but that probably won't help you, in the suit."

Indeed it won't.

A few minutes later, there's a loud buzzing on the horizon and his heartrate jumps back up. The approaching aircraft is either a response to the flare, or the twice-weekly vertibird-crash to which every settlement is subject. He readies himself, alert, already prepared for the inevitable search-and-rescue and bucket chain. Except, it turns out to be the former. Huh. Who'd have thought it. The vertibird swoops in, totally under control, no really, and settles gently on the ground a few feet away, kicking up dust but, crucially, not chunks of settlement.

"Where are we going?" shouts the pilot, over the sound of whirling blades.

"Up," she replies, gesturing with a finger.

You can't see it, because he's in a helmet, but there's now a definite sheen of sweat on X6-88's face. And that heartrate readout has three digits on it, which, for a synth, yikes.

He climbs on in, and the vertibird climbs into the sky.

"Okay," she says, or rather shouts over the sound of the vertibird's whirling blades. "Jump."

"What?" he says.

"Jump," she says. "Or I'll push you."

He looks down at the ground, which is a hell of a long way away. But when your General tells you to jump, you ask how high, right? Cos that means a few moments longer of not-jumping which are the kind of moments probably everybody wants to conserve.

She slaps her free hand on his shoulder. You might notice that the other one is clutching tight onto the handrail inside the vertibird. Very tight.

"Go," she says, and starts to count him out.

Three...

Two...

One...

He jumps.

Falling, his stomach tries to remain behind which is not the most pleasant of sensations at the best of times, let alone when it's weighed down by no less than twenty-four Fancy Lads Snack Cakes. He lands with a crash, the power armor absorbing the force of the fall and sending shockwaves out right through the foundations of Starlight, as previously foreshadowed.

The suit's readout is still looking absurdly high. His stomach doesn't seem to have returned to the right place. Then a few seconds later, there's another foundation-shaking crash, and there's a second metal giant kneeling heroically on the ground beside him.

He pulls off his helmet, shaking his head and trying to get his vision back.

She pulls off her helmet, too. Her face is just about as sick-looking as his. She takes a deep breath, and cracks a metal hand on his shoulder-plate. "This'll do you for a while, right?"

He nods.

They lope back to Starlight, metallically, helmets tucked under their arms. Settlers scatter, ground shakes, et cetera, et cetera. They head back into the storage shed, and shed their respective suits.

Now, getting out of a suit of power armor isn't an elegant procedure. You have to kinda hang out of it, ass-first, and work out where the floor is before you let yourself down to meet it. Some folk can do that pretty smoothly. Some folk have to do a sort of a mid-air wiggle before chancing it.

Guess which group the General's in?

Guess who's watching that butt-waggle with a rapidly-increasing heartrate?

She drops to the floor, brushes some imaginary dirt from her jeans, and straightens up. "What now?" she asks.

X6-88 strides across the floor, slings an arm around her waist, and dips her backwards, supporting her neck and pressing a delicate kiss onto her lips.

"Uh," she says. "X6... what are you doing?"

"We have exhausted all other options," he says.

Oh. Ohhh. Option one, then.

"Really," she says, "uh... can we find one of those settlers you spoke to? I'm not really sure how..."

"I did not speak to any settlers," he says.

He adjusts his grip on her waist, which has the secondary benefit of pulling her closer to him.

There's a long moment of silence, not even broken by footfall this time.

She blinks, slowly. "What?"

"I did not speak to any settlers," he says.

She blinks, slowly, realisation dawning with this set of blinks. "I jumped out of a vertibird for you," she says.

"The gesture was appreciated," he says.

He lets her up, and stands her on her feet.

"X6," she says, "what's this about?"

"I do not see you very often," he says. "I saw an opportunity, and took it."

She laughs. "I can't believe... oh my God. X6, you are a crafty one."

If you look real close right now, you might just see something. Something you might never have seen before, and something you may not have the pleasure of ever seeing again. But there it is: the tiniest hint of an uptick in the corner of his mouth. It's not a smile. Nothing so crude as that. But it's definitely there.

"Ma'am," he says. "My heartrate is dropping."

"Well," she says, "we'll just have to get it back up."

  
And that, funnily enough, is exactly what she said when... wait no I already did that joke once. Sorry. I'll come up with a better punchline next time.

END


End file.
